This blog is about all forms of wildlife I record around North Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes in particular. My main interests for 2012 will be looking for anything I've not seen before.

Thursday, March 3

Lesser Horseshoe Hunt

Two years after our failed attempt to locate 3 Lesser Horseshoe Bats at a farm in mid bucks, Laura and I returned yesterday evening to do a ‘winter reccy’ of the garage that previously housed the Lessers, plus a Brown Long-eared maternity roost. With permission from, the very helpful, Sue and the tenants and neighbour who share the loft space. This is what we found. Double click on the photo's for a closer look.

The first picture just goes to show the size if the 'loft' space basically it's above 3 large garages.

These bricks with slits are positioned at both ends of the loft and allow the bats access into the space

Also below these are smaller bricks that have a special cavity to house bats

Here's the view of these from the outside, with the shot on the right a close up of the smaller access point / hidden cavity. Also note the droppings.

Throughout the very clean loft we witness about 7 piles of bat droppings neatly deposited in a small area's. What was hard to work out was the fact that the bats didn't leave any signs of there presents on the actual roof space?

Another such area showing droppings but no signs of bats ever being present above

Then Laura finally spotted a much smaller pile of droppings with some staining on the roof above

Also built into the roof tiles are special bat tiles with an access slit, this is what they look like from the inside. So it's possible bats could use the area between the tiles and the roof lining? Again weird how there are not many droppings on the floor around these?

We also found a few Small Tortoiseshell butterfly wings scattered about which must have been eaten by the bats.

Finally at one end of the loft is a huge wasps nest. The second photo also shows another pile of bat droppings near to it. About 50 dead wasps were also scattered around this end

This last picture shows how the wasps are entering the loft.

Laura and I plan to return to find out what's using the space and whether the very rare Lesser Horseshoe bats will return. (the original findings were a first for Bucks, this species of bat is normally confined to Wales and the west country).